Archer Feedback/Questions

Crow

Barbed arrow is underwhelming at early levels. Normally DoTs trade delayed damage for more overall damage. But because of the shared cooldowns it's better to use Quick Shot every time as it does more damage. Barbed arrow needs to have its damage increased slightly and the duration increased by double to make it worth using.
It's weird that I get abilities requiring arrows I don't know how to make and can't learn. Is there something I'm missing here?
Traps are underwhelming. The time and money investment in tradeskills is better used just grinding more. Perhaps at much higher levels I might use traps, but up to around level 20 or so I don't think I will use them they are such a waste of effort compared to the benefits.
Having to stockpile equipment just to play the class maximally is something I'm still mulling over. If every class required it, it would not be a big deal, but having Archer need to spend 1+ hour grinding mats and crafting gear before they can join a group and be very effective makes them much weaker than every other class whose preparation is buying some food and water from the inn.

Most gameplay scenarios are solved by kiting or grouping, so it's important to consider that these two dominate strategies are used when building abilities.

jobanab

You're mistaken about Barbed Arrow. It's significantly more powerful than Quick Shot when you have 3 stacks of it up (and keep it stacked the entire fight). You're supposed to stack it to 3, weave in a Quick Shot, then re-apply Barbed Arrow after the Quick Shot so its stacks never wear off of the mob. You need to be careful to not let it end or you start back over stacking from nothing.
Check the archer vendors and nearby for arrow schematics. There will be schematics for things like Net Arrows you need to buy and learn before you can make them. You also need different reagents (like rope) for those.
Yes traps are largely non-functional or underwhelming now (with the exception of caltrops which are not crafted). Hopefully they'll be fixed at some point in the relatively near future.
Some people happen to enjoy this. I keep a fletching kit on me at all times so I can make some backup arrows when needed in a dungeon. There are often metal scraps for loot so as long as you bring extra wood you can craft some extra on the fly. Salvage Arrows does significantly help with reducing crafting time, but it's nearly impossible to use in a group setting, so you can really only effectively use that in a solo or small group. It does yield significant amounts of arrows when used after every fight (before corpses are looted).

Crow

jobanab
#1 Ah I didn't read carefully enough, good to know. I wish we could do a little better with the ability UI. The formatting violates basically every tech writing rule and is difficult to read. I'm still not sure if barbed arrow is actually better when you have to manage it dropping off versus using other more potent skills.

~~#2 I learned the net arrow recipe, but it doesn't show up in the fletching kit as an option.~~ Disregard, found out net arrows are only at the crafting table.

#4 I don't hate the class fantasy of preparation or crafting. It's the issue that I have to spend 25% more time than everyone else to still feel less powerful than similar DPS classes. If I was rewarded with 25% more effectiveness I might be game.

As far as salvage arrows I stopped using it once I did some simple math. 3 seconds to recover a maximum of 2 arrows means that I have to use it 50 times to recover one crafted stack. That's 2.5 minutes of skill usage (it's really more like 3 when you consider the small amounts of running and time before and after skill usage). If you do this for a stack of 1,000 arrows, you've spent 30 minutes recovering 1,000 arrows. It doesn't take more than 5-10 minutes to craft 1,000 arrows though, so salvage arrows is really something for the desperate trying to extend the life of a dwindling arrow supply.

jobanab

Crow

Crow you can get far more than two arrows at a time. 5-12 arrows per use was fairly common for me last i was using it in a group around a month ago. You may also need to run around to near each individual corpse or be closer to them. Its very janky and a pain to use.

Also the 3s cast time is a huge detriment. When you're main pulling the chance of salvage is off the table.

Taron

In a recent conversation someone made a statement I thought was good food for thought:

I always saw Archers as "Wizards who have to meditate for 20 minutes, but they do that meditating only once a day, while making arrows"

WestMort

jobanab

jobanab You're mistaken about Barbed Arrow. It's significantly more powerful than Quick Shot when you have 3 stacks of it up (and keep it stacked the entire fight). You're supposed to stack it to 3, weave in a Quick Shot, then re-apply Barbed Arrow after the Quick Shot so its stacks never wear off of the mob. You need to be careful to not let it end or you start back over stacking from nothing.

In a solo setting you are correct, in a group setting its a calculation based on projected damage to mobs HP. There are many scenario's where your statement is correct when the mob has plenty of HP and the group DPS is lower. This is not true if you don't get at least 3 ticks out of it. Also, there are plenty of classes that don't tie in "might" so they can just simply spam more. I don't see a good reason in separating the two other than being too good in solo situations.

I personally only use barbed arrow in half of my groups (am level 44) - if the mob is white/yellow/red I tend to use it. If it is blue, I tend not to. This is in group situations.

jobanab

WestMort that is a good point. the rapid TTK in a lot of groups makes many dots in general not very worthwhile.

Crow

jobanab When soloing and killing single enemies, you get a maximum of two arrows per corpse. I've never seen more than 2 per corpse.

Crow

WestMort I actually realized the reason for me thinking barbed arrow sucks is the way the weapon ratio damage interacts with the hard bleed damage.

Because I have a 17/40 bow at low level QS doing 100% ratio damage is more immediately effective than even the full stack of 50% ratio damage+6x3 damage of BA I. Especially considering the time taken to stack 3 barbs often means I could've had the enemy down to significantly lower health if I used QS three times instead. I can hit for 36 damage with a single QS, whereas barbed is usually doing an average of 21 damage per use over 30 seconds. Depending on enemy AC/dodge QS can average higher than that number.

If I didn't have a high level bow or didn't have only BA I, it would definitely have been the better choice. For a new server where I can't go buy a Worn Elderwood bow off the vendor, BA I would've been more use to me.

That said, the point where new Archers will be able to buy good bows at low level will come quickly after launch unless the devs increase vendor prices significantly, so I still think BA I at least needs a little bump.

dankell77

Rank 3 and 4 are the big bumps for barbed arrow. I think thats level 22 and 32. Before then for sure its underwhelming.

jobanab

Crow I just logged into my 31 archer and killed two light blue con drakes. the first one gave me 6 arrows on salvage, the second one gave me 8 arrows. it probably depends on your Martial ability how many you get back. Mine is 160/160

Crow

jobanab Good to know, thanks

sojourner

About the arrow usage and need to carry fletching kits -- on another EA sort of game I tried out, one of the solutions was to always get arrows back that landed, and never those that missed. So every single shot, whether it was autoattack or a special type of shot would result in 100% of landed arrows being left on the bodies for recovery. This was a huge help, though I do wonder how that would affect performance on a server when there are hundreds of players and the server side calculations needed to keep track.